


looking for a mind at work

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, canon AU, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-11-10 19:23:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11133135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: When the fireworks start, Jughead and Betty are alone.





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a somewhat lighthearted, summery fic that sort of fits into canon, but that's...not actually possible in canon? So in this AU, Betty never went away for her internship and Polly wasn't dating Jason / didn't disappear.

When the fireworks start, Jughead and Betty are alone.

“That better be Archie,” he says when Betty’s phone buzzes.

It’s not that he minds being alone with Betty. He likes Betty. Who doesn’t? She’s smart and kind and funny. And pretty – something that had never really occurred to him until exactly seven days into summer vacation, when she’d walked into Pop’s with her mother one evening around dusk and waved at him, and out of nowhere her smile had hit him so hard he felt like he was staring into the sun.

Three weeks later he’s still working _that_ through in his head, but the bottom line is, Betty is not the problem. Archie is, and the fact that he’s over an hour late for their annual tradition: milkshakes-to-go from Pop’s, followed by Fourth of July fireworks as viewed from the hilltop behind the Twilight Drive-In.

Jughead leans back on his elbows, tilting his chin up towards the sky, shifting a little to get comfortable. It was a good thing Archie hadn’t been responsible for bringing the picnic blanket (just the beer, which Jughead didn’t really care about).

“No, it’s Kevin,” she says after a pause. “He – oh, my god.”

Jughead keeps his eyes trained on the flashing bursts of color above him, willing his face to stay neutral. Their mutual best friend hadn’t bothered to call, or text, or even answer his phone when Betty had called thirty minutes ago. The chocolate milkshake they’d brought for him is slowly melting in its styrofoam cup.

He might even be worried about Archie, if this weren’t the umpteenth time he’d ghosted on Jughead with no explanation since school let out a month ago.

A line of white-hot light squiggles into the air, exploding into a flurry of sparks, like little silver-blue fish darting through the night air. “If he’s not here in five minutes, I’m going to _drink his milkshake_ ,” Jughead says in his best imitation of Daniel Plainview. “ _I’ll drink it up._ ”

He looks over at Betty for her reaction, and realizes she’s crying.

“Betty?” He sits up and rests his hand on her shoulder without thinking. The strap of her blue-and-white-striped tank top has slipped off her shoulder, and he realizes the satiny peach strip beneath his palm is her bra strap; he pulls his hand away quickly. “What’s wrong?”

She’s still staring down at her phone, the screen gone black in her white-knuckled grip. Her other hand is clenched into a fist in her lap. “Juggie,” she whispers. “Jason Blossom is _dead_.”

 

 

 

 

 

The news spreads quickly, though the police department (and Kevin) would later deny that they’d released the identity of the body that night (to anyone _other_ than Betty Cooper).

Jason Blossom, aged seventeen, twin brother of Cheryl Blossom, son of Clifford and Penelope Blossom, heir to the Blossom family maple syrup fortune, had washed up on the shore of the Sweetwater River about an hour before the town fireworks show was scheduled to start. Kevin had found the body (accompanied by an unnamed paramour, Jughead assumed, knowing Kevin’s usual reason for hanging out by the river during sunset).

Though Jason’s body was found in the river, the cause of death was determined to be a bullet to the head.

There were no suspects.

 

 

 

 

 

Archie’s excuse for missing the fireworks – that his dad had needed help with something on a construction site that night – doesn’t make any sense. “Why are we even talking about this, Jug?” he asks with wide, guileless eyes. “Somebody _murdered_ Jason Blossom.”

Jughead nearly strains a muscle trying not to roll his eyes. “Yeah, I know,” he says. _Obviously._ “But I don’t know what that has to do with you ditching me and Betty four times in as many weeks. Unless it’s because _you_ were off plotting his murder.”

“Don’t even joke about that, man,” Archie mutters.

(He’d never admit it out loud, but for a moment – when Archie wouldn’t meet his eyes, wouldn’t give him an honest answer for his whereabouts the day and night of the murder – Jughead had wondered.)

 

 

 

 

 

Betty invites Jughead to go to the pool with her the following week, and he agrees.

“Are Archie and Kevin coming?” he asks, as casually as he can. Betty had offered to pick him up, and now they’re driving with the windows down, the breeze sending wisps of hair flying around her face. A pair of pink sunglasses is perched on her nose, just slightly too big for her face. Her phone is playing a Carly Rae Jepsen album through the car’s speakers and every now and then he’ll catch her singing along to a line under her breath, just barely audible, the lyrics nonsensical: _there’s a little black hole in my golden cup, so you pour and I’ll say stop._

He sort of feels like he’s in a movie – one of the cheesy-but-good teen movies from the 80s, like _Pretty in Pink_ – not that he’d ever admit to enjoying _Pretty in Pink_.

But if Jughead Jones is anyone from those movies, he’s Duckie, and it’s just too depressing to take the metaphor any further than that.

“No, Kevin’s at the beach with his cousins,” she says. “I didn’t invite Archie.” She pauses. “It’s not like he would come.”

It’s a Tuesday, so the pool is less crowded than on the weekend, and they set up their chairs and towels half-in, half-out of the shade. Betty slips off her coverup and lays back on her towel in the sunshine. He’s oddly relieved to see that she’s wearing a modest one-piece, at least until a few minutes later, when she flips over onto her stomach and reveals the almost-entirely-bare back.

Jughead buries his nose in his book, slumped in his chair in the shade.

After a while Betty rolls onto her side, propping herself up with one elbow to look at him. “What are you reading?”

He tilts the cover towards her so she can see. “ _Homicide_ ,” he says. “It’s written by the guy who made The Wire.” He shrugs. “It felt appropriate.”

Betty takes off her sunglasses. “Kevin told me they don’t even have any leads,” she says, lowering her voice.

“Well, based on what I’m reading in here, that’s pretty much par for the course.”

“But it’s scary,” she says, her voice quieter still. “I mean, whoever it is is still – out there. What if it’s, like, a serial killer, and Jason was just _random_?” In the sunlight, Betty shivers.

Jughead lays his book down on his lap. “Do you really find it that hard to believe someone would want to murder a member of the Blossom family?”

“Jughead.” She’s not amused.

“Sorry.” He swallows, looking away. “When I’m trying to make light I tend to go…really dark.”

Betty sighs. “It’s okay. I just – this summer isn’t really turning out to be what I thought it would be.”

He assumes she means her internship. Ten weeks in L.A., working for the West Coast outpost of a publishing company – Jughead had been equal parts impressed and jealous when she told him about it.

But then her date of departure had come and gone – and Betty hadn’t. When he’d seen her at the library the very next day, she’d brushed off his questioning, saying simply that it hadn’t worked out. And he hadn’t pushed any further. (They were in a library, after all.)

“I can relate to that,” Jughead says, and if _she_ assumes he means his roadtrip with Archie, which had never happened, because Archie had never shown up – well, she wouldn’t be wrong.

She slips her pink sunglasses back onto her face, but he can still feel her eyes on him. “Aren’t you hot, wearing that beanie out here?”

Jughead raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know, am I?”

Betty laughs, rolling back onto her stomach. “Shut up.”

 

 

 

 

 

Betty keeps inviting him to do things – go to the movies, go to the pool, go to Pop’s.

She’s bored, is the unspoken truth behind it; whatever happened with her internship hadn’t left her enough time to find a summer job or even a regular babysitting gig. And with Kevin gone for two weeks, Polly working as a camp counselor, and Archie mysteriously busy any time he isn’t working on his dad’s crew, Jughead figures she just doesn’t have anyone else to hang out with.

He’s not complaining. After much thought – and many hundreds of now-deleted words about a sweet-but-sexy Hitchcock blonde who’s engaged in a will-they-won’t-they with the sly, sullen protagonist of his latest short story – he’s come to an embarrassing but nonetheless firm conclusion:

He, Jughead Jones, has a crush on Betty Cooper.

The nervous excitement when a new text comes through on his phone (it’s almost always her). The fluttering in his stomach when her foot grazes his by accident beneath their table at Pop’s. The dopey smile he can barely suppress when she compliments the light smattering of freckles he’s accumulated after multiple afternoons spent sitting in the sun with her at the public pool.

There’s no other explanation. He _likes_ Betty.

And it’s not just that he’s finally (finally, finally) realized that Betty is beautiful. She’s _interesting_ – far more interesting than he’d ever given her credit for, which is a complete failing on his part more than anything else. She likes challenging books and old movies and true crime podcasts. All things that Jughead likes, but that they’d never really talked about together, because in the past, if they were together, they were with Archie.

“I can’t believe you listen to My Favorite Murder,” Betty says. She’s playing idly with the straw in her root beer float, trapping the end between her teeth every so often, and Jughead finds it so distracting that he forces himself to stare at the back of Ethel Muggs’ head a few booths away.

He risks a glance back at her face. Big mistake – it’s still gorgeous. “Yeah, well. Guess I’ve finally got a hometown murder to share.”

Her expression grows somber. He touches her hand lightly, like her skin might burn his fingertips. “I’m kidding.”

Betty leans forward, and as she does, her hand slips further underneath his own on the tabletop. Jughead swallows, but doesn’t move. “Don’t you think it’s weird,” she says quietly, “that it’s been _three weeks_ and they haven’t named a single suspect?”

“Not…really,” he says. “These things take time. I mean, in _Homicide_ -”

“This isn’t Baltimore, Jug.” She sits back abruptly, her hand sliding away, disappearing into her lap. “It’s _Riverdale_. The police spend eighty percent of their time writing jaywalking tickets and truancy reports, and in case you haven’t noticed, school’s out. They have nothing else to do but investigate.”

“They also haven’t had a murder to solve in, like, eighty years,” Jughead points out.

“But it’s like they’re not even trying,” Betty insists. “Polly knew Jason. _We_ knew him. Kind of. But has anyone come and talked to _any_ of us?”

The answer was no. No one had stopped by the trailer to ask Jughead what he knew about Jason Blossom. And he wouldn’t have had much to say if they had – he’d barely interacted with the guy, outside of a math class they’d shared and a handful of dumb football parties that Archie had dragged him to last year.

But Polly…it was strange, that no one had talked to Polly. She and Jason had dated, albeit briefly. And if even Jughead knew about their relationship, the cops had to know about it, too.

Jughead sighs. “So what are you trying to say?”

The question actually gives Betty pause. “I don’t know,” she finally says. “I just think it’s weird.”

 

 

 

 

Their milkshakes-and-murder date, as Jughead likes to think of it, happens on the eve of Kevin’s return home to Riverdale. It’s their last hurrah, the finale of the Jughead-and-Betty show, now that her _actual_ best friend is back in town.

So it’s somewhat of a shock when the text pops up on his phone two days later, asking him to come over to her house.

Kevin’s already there when he arrives, stretched out comfortably on the sofa like it’s his own home. An episode of _Silicon Valley_ is paused on the tv. “Hey,” Kevin says, lifting a hand in greeting.

“Hey.” Jughead ducks his head a little, gesturing Betty to move closer so she can hear him. “Betts, um – did you need something?”

She looks at him like he’s speaking Latin. “What?”

“Like – did you need me to do you a favor, or…?”

“Juggie,” she says, her eyes softening. “No. I just wanted to hang out.”

Oh. _Oh._ “Yeah,” he says, suddenly a million times more uncomfortable than he already was. “No, yeah. I just thought-”

“You thought I was going to ditch you now that Kevin’s back?” Betty takes his hand and squeezes it. He thinks his heart might actually stop beating. “That’s crazy. You’re not, like, my back-up friend. We’re friends.” Uncertainty falls across her face like a shadow. “Right?”

“Yes,” he says immediately. Sincerely.

She smiles, and he knows that in that moment, he’d do anything she asked. Bake a cake. Jump out the window. Make out with Kevin. If Betty wanted it, Jughead would do it.

“Sit down,” she says.

He does.


	2. two

The text from Archie comes out of the blue, midway through a Wednesday night showing of _The Maltese Falcon,_ just as Humphrey Bogart is being drugged and knocked unconscious.

_pops 2nite?_

Jughead turns away from the projector, his thumb hovering over the keyboard of his phone. He’s tempted to say no. Give Archie a taste of his own medicine, as it were.

But. It’s _Archie_. The guy who taught him to ride a bike when they were nine years old, and Jughead was the only kid in their fourth grade class who didn’t know how. The guy who goes to a double feature at the Bijou every year with Jughead for his birthday, and drinks three Cokes just so he can stay awake through the entire second movie. The guy who walks straight past the football table in the cafeteria every single day to sit with Jughead and Betty and Kevin instead.

Maybe there’s a reason he’s been MIA this summer. A good reason, that he’ll share over milkshakes and burgers at Pop’s, and all will be right with the world. All Jughead has to do is show up.

_sure. I’m at work. be there by 11:30?_

The reply comes quick. _sounds good._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Archie’s sitting in a booth facing the entrance when Jughead walks through the front door of Pop’s, drumming his hands on the tabletop to a rhythm that exists only in his head. He catches Jughead’s eye and waves.

There’s a chocolate milkshake already waiting for Jughead. “Aw, you shouldn’t have,” he says, spooning a giant mound of whipped cream and sprinkles into his mouth before he’s even all the way into his seat.

“There’s a burger coming too, if you want it,” Archie says, his voice almost hopeful.

Jughead stays focused on the milkshake. “ _If_ I want it,” he scoffs, swirling the remains of the whipped cream into the half-melted chocolate.

When he finally glances up at Archie, the other boy is looking straight at him, a look on his face that could nearly be described as _pained_. “Jughead, I am so sorry,” he says.

Jughead puts his spoon down, and nods slightly. He’s listening.

Archie swallows. “I know I’ve been a crappy friend to you,” he continues.

“And Betty.”

“And Betty,” Archie repeats. “I’ve bailed on the both of you. A lot. And I don’t have a good excuse, but – it stops now.”

“Okay.” Jughead shrugs a little, and even as he says it he knows he’s being kind of an asshole – but he can’t let Archie off the hook entirely. Not this time. Not if things are ever going to go back to normal. “So what _is_ your excuse?”

Archie looks confused. “What?”

“You said you didn’t have a _good_ excuse,” Jughead says. “You didn’t say you don’t have one at all.”

He can practically see the gears turning in Archie’s head – not a new phenomena, but disconcerting when it’s clearly because Archie’s trying to come up with a lie.

“I don’t know, man,” Archie says finally, his shoulders slumping. “I’ve – it’s been weird, okay? I’ve been trying to figure things out. I’m working on my dad’s crew, and he wants me to like, ‘take it seriously,’” he says, making air quotes with his fingers. “So I can take over the business in 40 years or whatever. And…I don’t know if I want that.”

Jughead presses his lips together and forces himself to look down at his hands. It’s not the first time Archie has had complaints along those lines – of his father _wanting_ things for him, _expecting_ things of him. Of his father _building_ something for him.

But it’s the first time Jughead’s ever wanted to punch him because of it.

“And – I didn’t want to tell anyone this.” Archie sighs. “But I’ve been kind of…getting into music.”

Jughead looks back up at his oldest friend. “Music.”

“Yeah.” Archie looks uncomfortable now, but the set of his shoulders tells Jughead he’s at least being honest. “I started really getting into playing my guitar a couple months ago, and I think – I think maybe it’s what I want to do.”

“You want to play guitar,” Jughead says.

“Not _just_ play guitar. I want to write songs – I mean, I _am_ writing songs. And singing them. I want to perform.”

Against his better judgment, Jughead’s mouth curves up in a half smile. “Like – you want to be a Pussycat?”

Archie laughs. “I couldn’t handle being a Pussycat. But – yeah. Y’know, like, my own kind of Pussycat.”

“The debut album from Riverdale’s own Archie Andrews,” Jughead says. “My Own Kind of Pussycat.”

They’re both still recovering from the giggles when their waitress stops by, two burgers with the works in hand.

It’s the laziest kind of peace offering – the kind any random kid at their high school could tell you Jughead Jones would never turn down. And Archie’s still hiding something; Jughead can tell.

But there’s a reason no one ever wrote the song _summertime, and the livin’ is lonely._

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Is the butter soft yet?”

Jughead eyes the sticks of butter on the kitchen counter with suspicion. They look exactly like they did twenty minutes ago. “I don’t know. How do you know?”

Betty looks at him; it’s the kind of look that proves, without a doubt, that she is Alice Cooper’s daughter. “You touch it, Jug.”

“Oh.” He pokes a stick of butter gently with one fingertip, leaving a small indentation behind. “Yeah, it’s soft.”

“Great.” She finishes rinsing a bowl in the sink and then joins him at the counter, businesslike, wiping her hands on the red-and-yellow apron tied around her waist.

He had thought it was a frilly little dress at first, and considered teasing her for gussying up for him, until she’d turned around and he’d seen that it was just tied on over shorts and a tank top. Even if it’s not a dress, though, it’s adorable on her, which Jughead didn’t even know an apron could _be_. Maybe it’s just the Betty Effect, messing with his mind.

It would explain why he’s in her kitchen at 10 a.m. on a Friday, anyway, helping her bake a cake for no other reason than she’d said she wanted to.

Though _helping_ is probably too strong a word. He stands back and watches as she dumps the butter and some powdered sugar together into a mixing bowl, then covers the mixing stand with a dish towel, and turns it on.

She turns to look at him while they wait. Jughead raises an eyebrow. “Very impressive, Betty Crocker.”

Betty rolls her eyes, but he doesn’t miss the blush that creeps into her cheeks, nor the fact that his own face grows warm at the knowledge that _he’s_ responsible for it.  

It’s an excellent time to change the subject. “I hung out with Archie the other night,” he says, fiddling with a spatula.

She plucks the spatula out of his grip. “And you didn’t invite me?” Her voice stays light, but he can tell there’s an undercurrent of hurt there.

“Well, he invited me,” Jughead says.

“So Archie didn’t invite me,” she says, nodding slowly. She turns off the mixer. “Even better.”

“He wanted to apologize,” Jughead says, for some reason unable to resist the urge to cover for Archie Andrews now that he’s back in his good graces. “I think that’s…easier, one-on-one.”

Betty doesn’t look convinced. “Maybe.”

She scrapes down the sides of the bowl, then pours in the raspberry puree that Jughead had painstakingly pressed through a strainer earlier that morning to remove the seeds, and switches the mixer back on.

“He told me he’s been getting into music. Writing songs and stuff.”

Betty rolls her eyes. “Why, so he can pick up girls?”

The morning, which had started off so pleasant, is zooming downhill fast. “I don’t think so. Look – we don’t have to talk about Archie. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Betty looks at him, her eyes inscrutable. “You don’t have to apologize. He’s our friend.”

“And speaking of friends…” Jughead draws out the last word for effect. “Have you heard anything new from Kevin?”

“About Jason?” she asks, lowering her voice, though as far as he knows her parents are both at work. “No, nothing. I don’t think he wants to talk about it.”

“Understandable.”

Betty shrugs. “Honestly, even if he did – I don’t know if there’s anything to tell.”

“So the trail has gone cold,” Jughead says, leaning back against the counter.   

“I guess.” She switches the mixer off again, and swipes her pinky finger through the frosting, popping it into her mouth. “Mm. Try it.”

Jughead does the same, closing his eyes in appreciation at the sweet, buttery, fruity flavor. “Okay, give me the spatula.”

“Juggie, _no_ ,” she giggles, and catches his hands with her own when he dives for it. Her fingers thread through his as he backs her up against the counter.

It’s quite possibly the closest he’s ever been to Betty Cooper. Just a few inches more, and he could kiss her – a conclusion she seems to reach at the exact same moment he does, her laughter trailing off, her eyes growing wide.

Jughead tries to keep his eyes on hers, but he can’t stop his gaze from dropping down to her lips. They’re just – _there_ , pink, slightly parted, right in front of him. Her thumb brushes lightly – involuntarily? – over the back of his hand.

She isn’t pushing him away.

“Betty, um…” He pulls their hands together in between them, untangling their fingers so he can fold his own around hers –

And as he does, he notices something strange on the palms of her hands.

“Hey,” he says, unable to suppress the note of concern in his voice. He runs his thumb over her soft skin. There’s…bumps? dents? something?…there. “Did you burn yourself?”

She jerks her hands away, and in an instant, the moment is over.

“No. I – it’s nothing. I was helping my mom cook dinner the other night and I cut myself on something. Skewers,” she adds. “On the grill.”

He’s almost certain she’s lying, but he doesn’t know what to do about it. Betty isn’t Archie. If he presses in the wrong place, he might touch a fault line. “Do you need a band aid, or something?” he asks, after a pause that’s too long to be comfortable.

Betty looks up at him, and her smile – god, her smile makes something in his chest collapse in on itself. “I’m fine, Juggie,” she says.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Betty frosts the cake, and makes him take 18 photos with her phone before she decides one is good enough for Instagram. He eats half of it, while she nibbles on a slice so thin it falls over on its side, insisting she’s not hungry.

He goes home, and replays the almost-kiss over and over and over again in his head, a maddening loop with a different ending every time.

Archie would have done it. Archie would have kissed her. Archie would have lifted her up onto the kitchen counter, hands messy with flour, leaving traces of his touch on her back and her neck and her hair. Betty’s mouth, soft and wet and warm against his.

And the worst thing about it all – the thing that makes it absolutely unbearable – is that Jughead is pretty sure that right there, in that moment –

_He_ could have done it, too _._

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every weekend, he calls his mom and Jellybean in Toledo.

His mother always sounds polite but impatient, murmuring _mmhmm_ and _really_ and _huh_ whenever Jughead pauses, as if to prove she’s paying attention. He keeps talking anyway. If she couldn’t stay in town to actually raise him, then listening to her teenage son blather on the phone once a week is literally the least she can do.

Jellybean, though – Jellybean _loves_ to talk. She tells him about her friends (they’re nice) and her teachers (they’re nice too) and the apartment in Toledo (it’s okay, but she misses being able to step right outside like she could from their old house back in Riverdale).

And Jughead talks back, telling her about his day, about the stories he’s working on, about nights working at the drive-in and all the movies he gets to see for free.

(He does not tell her about Jason Blossom.)

This weekend, he describes the cake he’d made with Betty, and tries not to think about what he’d seen (felt? imagined?) on her hands.

“I remember Betty,” Jellybean says. “She babysat me.”

Jughead smiles. He remembers too – his parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary, and trusted Betty to babysit Jellybean more than they trusted their own son, even though they were the same exact age. Twelve.

He’d been furious. He had spent the entire evening playing video games at Archie’s house, muttering under his breath about the fact that Betty Cooper was at that very moment in _his_ house across town, earning money that _he_ hadn’t even been offered, to do the world’s easiest job: making sure Jellybean didn’t accidentally kill herself in the span of one dinner date.

In the end, though, the joke was on them. Jughead became the _de facto_ babysitter when his dad started drinking again and lost his job, and his mom started working the night shift. And he was good at it, too.

“Is Betty your girlfriend now?”

Jughead snorts. “No.”

“She’s pretty. And you spend practically all your time with her.”

Both statements were undeniably true. “And?” Jughead says, after a pause.

“I think you should date her.”

“Would that it were so simple, Bean.”

“What?”

“Nevermind,” he sighs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That night, as _Back to the Future_ is kicking into gear on the big screen, he sends Betty a text. _Jellybean says hi._

The little typing icon pops up almost immediately. _Jellybean!! tell her i say hi too :)_

_Will do._

Jughead doesn’t really know where to take it from there, so he turns his gaze back to the movie, which he’s seen enough times to follow without paying much attention. The drive-in is pretty crowded tonight, but not at full capacity like it should be on a Saturday. It’s been a while since he’s seen a sold-out show, something he tries not to dwell on.

His phone buzzes again. _are u working?_

_Yeah_ , he writes.

_pop’s after?_

Alone in the projection booth, Jughead doesn’t even try to stop the goofy grin from spreading across his face.

But it fades just as quickly, when the next text pops up on his screen:

_me + archie are here, just text me when on the way!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so so much for all the kudos & kind words! I truly appreciate it.


	3. three

As he walks through the parking lot of Pop’s, Jughead spots Betty and Archie through the window, seated at the first booth left of the door.

Even in the orange-tinted glow of the diner’s neon lights, they look striking together. Betty’s soft blonde hair, Archie’s shock of red. They’re both beautiful, heads tilted toward one another, like a drawing out of a picture book.

Then Archie leans back in his seat, revealing a third person in the booth with them. A girl Jughead doesn’t recognize.

Betty sees him first when he walks into the diner. “Jughead!” she calls, even though he’s already halfway to the table. _Jughead?_ , he can hear the mystery girl ask.

“Hey,” he says, sliding into the booth beside Betty. He smiles at her, nods at Archie, and then looks at the dark-haired girl across the table. She looks back at him expectantly. He can’t help but notice she has excellent posture.

“Jug, this is Veronica,” Betty says.

“Veronica Lodge,” the girl says, and offers him her hand. He takes it, giving it an awkward, brief shake.

“Jughead Jones.” He looks from Veronica to Archie to Betty, but no one offers up an explanation for who she is, or what she’s doing here. “So…how do you know each other?”

“We don’t,” Veronica says breezily.

“Veronica just moved here from New York,” Archie adds. “ _City_.”

Jughead raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, I got that, Arch.”

“I came in to pick up dinner for my mom and I, and I saw these two and thought I may as well introduce myself.” Veronica smiles brightly at Betty, who smiles back; Jughead wonders if anyone else can sense how forced it is on the latter’s part. “There’s a whole month and a half before school starts. Just enough time to get into some trouble.”

Veronica’s hair is shiny, shoulder-length, neatly parted; he thinks she’s wearing lipstick. A delicate string of pearls sits around her neck, and there’s a watch on her wrist that he can only assume was outrageously expensive, because why else would a 16-year-old wear a watch on her wrist? She doesn’t look like a public school student – not in Riverdale, at least.

“Or just enough time to realize what a drag Riverdale is, and run back to the city before it’s too late,” he deadpans.

“Juggie,” Betty scolds, and he feels bad for only a split second before he feels her foot nudging against his beneath the table.

He nudges back. He glances at her, and she meets his eyes, her mouth twisting into a half-smile. “I’m kidding,” he says.

“There’s stuff to do here,” Archie says, shifting in his seat to face Veronica more directly. “You can go to the pool, or the mall, or ride your bike along Sweetwater River. You can rent kayaks there, too.”

Veronica makes an _aww_ face, and rests her hand on his arm. Jughead isn’t sure if Betty actually stiffens beside him, or if he’s just imagining it. “I think you’ve misread me, Archie. I’m not really the outdoorsy type.”

“Okay – how about movies?” Archie suggests, a little too eagerly. “Jughead works at the drive-in, he gets us in for free.”

“Not _every_ time,” Jughead protests.

“A drive-in? That’s positively mid-century. I love it.” Veronica sounds delighted.

Betty snorts. “It might be the one thing Riverdale has that New York City doesn’t.”

“Well,” Veronica says, her voice softening, “I don’t know anyone in New York who would’ve let a total stranger crash their hang at the diner like this.” The side of her mouth lifts in a crooked smile, the first time she’s looked anything less than completely cool and collected since Jughead sat down. “It's pretty cool of you.”

Jughead risks another glance at Betty; she looks suddenly softer, too.

“You know, we probably would have met anyway. I usually do the first-day tours at school for new students,” Betty says. “But we could do yours early, if you want.”

“That would be nice,” Veronica says. Jughead meets Archie’s eyes across the table, and lifts his eyebrows slightly. Archie just grins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When it’s time to leave, Archie offers to walk Veronica home without even asking where she lives.

“I was going to just call my mom’s driver…” Veronica looks down at her phone, then shrugs. “Why not. Maybe you can help me learn my way around.”

Betty’s frowning at Archie from across the booth – they are next door neighbors, after all – but he doesn’t appear to notice. Jughead touches her elbow lightly. “I can walk you home,” he says, keeping his voice low.

She looks at him, uncertain. “You don’t have to.”

“I don’t mind.”

She bites her lip, then nods. “Okay.”

Their goodbyes are uncomfortable. “Aren’t you heading our way, Jug?” Archie asks, when they reach the sidewalk, and Betty and Jughead turn in the opposite direction.

Jughead tilts his head towards Betty, who’s standing with her arms wrapped around her middle. “I’m taking Betty home.”

To his credit, Archie has the grace to look embarrassed. “Oh – god, Betty, I’m sorry. Did you want to just come with me and Veronica first? It’s not that far.” He looks to Veronica. “Betty and I live next to each other,” he explains.

Betty shakes her head slightly. “No, it’s fine,” she says. “I’m going with Jughead.”

Archie looks at them oddly, but Veronica smiles. “Have a good night, kids,” she says, and threads her arm through Archie’s, pulling him away down the sidewalk.

Betty gives Jughead a small smile. “Let’s go.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

They walk for a few minutes in companionable silence, until Betty says, “You really didn’t have to walk me home, you know.”

“Betty, there’s a murderer on the loose,” Jughead replies. “Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she says. “Actually…”

She trails off, and Jughead nudges her with an elbow. “What?”

“Well – I don’t know what you’re going to think of this. I think it might be crazy.” Betty kicks at a stray rock on the pavement. “But I’ve been wondering what it would be like to investigate.”

“Like…conceptually?”

“No,” she says. “Like actually investigate the murder of Jason Blossom. The police are getting nowhere, and…I don’t know. He was our classmate. This is our town. We should know what happened, right?”

Jughead lets it sink in for a moment. “That’s…huh.”

“I told you,” she mutters. “Crazy.”

“Not crazy,” he says, bumping his arm against hers. “I’m just surprised.”

“I need to _do_ something, Juggie,” Betty sighs. “This whole summer has felt so pointless. Not that I don’t like hanging out with you. And Kevin,” she adds quickly. “But I had all these plans, and now it’s just…” She shrugs.

“What happened with your internship, anyway?” he asks. “You never said.”

“Some paperwork thing,” she says. “It doesn’t matter. What do you think? Do you want to track down a killer with me?”

Jughead frowns. It sounds equal parts silly, dangerous…and intriguing. He’s been mulling over the start of a crime novel for going on two months now, and getting almost nowhere; maybe digging into a real-life crime will give him the jumpstart he needs to get more than a page or two down in writing.

And if it means spending even more time around Betty – well.

“Let me think about it,” he says.

“Really?” She sounds excited.

“That’s not a yes,” he warns her. “I’m just gonna think about it.”

“Okay, okay.” But the smile is still on her face by the time they reach her house ten minutes later.

They stop by the walk up to the front door, and Betty turns to face him. “So who’s going to protect _you_ when you walk home alone?”

“What, you think anyone’s gonna come after me when they see _these_ guns?” He flexes his arms dramatically, and Betty giggles.

Jughead shoves his hands into his pockets, smiling down at the sidewalk. “No, I’ll probably just steal Vegas from Archie’s house and take him with me.”

“He’d be the worst guard dog ever,” she snorts.

“Yeah, he’d just lick the murderer’s face off or something.”

Betty tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m kind of serious, though. I don’t think you should walk home by yourself. It’s past one in the morning.”

“Well, I can’t exactly call a cab to pick me up.” Jughead shrugs. “Or my dad.”

“You could stay at Archie’s,” she muses. “But you’d have to wait for him to get home.”

He doesn’t make the joke that immediately comes to mind – that Archie might not even be coming home, the way things were going with Veronica.

“Or you could stay here.”

Jughead looks at her. “Like…on your couch?”

“If you want.” Betty shrugs. “Or in my room, if you don’t want my mom to wake you up at sunrise, demanding to know why you’re in her living room.”

Jughead’s suddenly grateful for the sparse suburban streetlighting, because he’s pretty sure his face is on fire. “Um. Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Polly’s snuck boys up to her room before,” Betty says. “My parents are pretty heavy sleepers. It’ll be fine. I have a sleeping bag you can use.”

Truthfully, it’s not like he has a better option. He doesn’t _really_ want to make the thirty-minute walk home by himself in the middle of the night, not with Jason Blossom’s killer possibly roaming the streets. And if F.P. is even home, he’s more likely than not passed out in his recliner, an empty beer bottle or two in his lap.

“Alright,” Jughead says. “Let’s have a sleepover.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jughead takes in Betty’s bedroom while she digs around under the bed for the sleeping bag. There are photographs everywhere – of Betty and her parents, Betty and her sister, Betty and her cat. Betty and Kevin, Betty and Archie – there are a lot of Archie – and there’s one that catches him by surprise: Betty, Archie, and Jughead, lined up in a row, their toothy grins filling the frame.

His own unselfconscious smile betrays their youth; it must have been taken when they were just 11 or 12. Right before Jughead entered his angsty phase – a phase he’s still in, truth be told, but at least he knows it now – and stopped smiling for photos.

“Here you go.” Betty’s voice pulls him back out of his head. He watches as she unfurls the sleeping bag with a flourish, laying it on the ground parallel to the bed. She plucks one of the pillows off the comforter – there are five, he’s amused to note – and places it at the opening of the sleeping bag.

“Thanks.”

“Sure.” Betty pulls a set of pajamas out of a dresser drawer, and looks at him over her shoulder, an apology in her eyes. “I don’t think I have anything that’d fit you.”

“It’s okay,” Jughead waves her off.

“Okay. I’m gonna go change into these in the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

While she’s gone, Jughead runs through the options in his head, and settles for taking his jeans off, but leaving them in the bottom of the sleeping bag so he can pull them right back on when it’s time to wake up. By the time she returns he’s tucked himself in, staring up at the glowy plastic stars plastered across her ceiling.

Betty switches off her bedside lamp and crawls beneath the covers. There’s silence for a beat, and then she says, “Do you sleep in your hat?”

He’d forgotten it was even there. “No,” he admits. After a moment’s hesitation, he tugs it off.

Jughead glances up and realizes Betty’s looking down at him, her cheek resting on her arm. He feels oddly vulnerable under her gaze, his hat discarded, her face in shadows.

Jughead clears his throat. “So, Veronica. She’s unique.”

“I like her,” Betty says.

“Really?”

“Really.”

As his eyes adjust to the dark, her features become clearer; she looks…calm. Content. Like a different Betty than the one he knows in the daytime.

“I like you, too,” she continues, her voice soft, sleepy. “I don’t know why we never hung out before.”

Jughead’s mouth feels dry. “We hung out sometimes.”

“Not really,” she says. “Only when Archie was around.”

“That doesn’t count?”

Her mouth curves up into a smile. “Nope.”

“Okay,” Jughead says. “Noted.”

“You’re funny.”

He makes a face. “What? Are you drunk right now?”

Betty giggles. “No, I’m just tired. But maybe they’re like, the same thing.”

“They’re not the same thing,” he mumbles.

“Mm?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “Go to sleep, Betts.”

“Alright.” She turns away, rolling onto her back, just a sliver of her arm left visible from where he lies on the floor. “Goodnight, Juggie.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

“ _Jughead_.”

He opens his eyes and immediately shuts them again. Sunlight streams in through the filmy pink curtains, casting the room in warm light. Betty’s kneeling beside him, and she taps his shoulder gently. “Time to wake up.”

“Mmph.” Jughead covers his eyes with the palm of his hand. “What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty. And my parents will be back from the grocery store by ten, so you need to get up. Look, I got you breakfast.” She waves a muffin in front of his face enticingly.

He cracks one eye open – it looks, and smells, like blueberry. Pushing himself upright, he accepts it, groaning in appreciation as he takes a huge bite. “Delicious. Did you make that?”

“No, my mom did.”

Before he can marvel at the existence of a family who has fresh-baked blueberry muffins ready to go by 9:30 in the morning, Betty’s back up on her feet, making her bed. He pulls his jeans on and stands up, hands her his pillow, and rolls up the sleeping bag.

She makes him leave through the back door, “in case any neighbors are around,” but he knows she really means the Andrews. He pauses in the doorway. “Thanks for letting me stay here,” he says. “And…I’m in.”

Betty beams at him. “You’re in?”

He tries to keep his own smile under control, but it’s so hard when Betty Cooper’s standing there in front of him, looking like he just promised her the moon. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm probably going to regret committing to this whole "actual investigation plot" thing... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> As always, thank you for your comments and kudos, and please let me know what you think! <3


	4. four

As a first step, they decide to visit the scene of the crime.

“This is it,” Betty says, pointing to a gap in the trees alongside the narrow gravel road that leads to Sweetwater Park.

It’s early, just about 8 in the morning; in an hour or two, minivans will start winding their way down the single-lane road, headed for the park itself, full of parents and children and inner tubes and picnic baskets. Betty and Jughead hop off of their bikes and follow a well-trod dirt path down to a small but pretty clearing next to the river, soft green grass brushing against their ankles, sunlight dappling the ground. Jughead can see why Kevin likes it here.

“It doesn’t even look like anything happened here,” Betty murmurs.

“It’s possible nothing _did_ happen here,” Jughead points out. “This is just where Kevin found the body, right?”

They poke around for a bit, nudging aside fallen branches with their feet, finding nothing but an empty soda can and a few cigarette butts. A length of battered police tape trails from the trunk of a tree, long past the point of deterring intruders.

Eventually Betty makes her way to the river’s edge, looking out across the water. From where he’s standing, she appears half bathed in sunlight, half in shadow. Jughead wishes he could take her picture.

“Look, there’s kind of an eddy here,” she says. “An object going downstream could hit the rocks, and end up here on the shore.”

Jughead swallows hard. It’s a little nauseating, to realize the “object” in question could have been Jason Blossom. A boy, their own age, who lived and breathed and ate and drank and slept. Who played football with Archie, who sat in front of Jughead in math class, who took Betty’s sister on dates.

He joins her at the shore, carefully navigating the damp, rocky earth. Light glitters off of the water’s surface, so bright he has to squint. He’d never been keen on hiking, or camping, or the outdoors in general – but Jughead can’t deny the quiet beauty around them. If they were different people, there together for a different reason, he might even consider it romantic.

“So they didn’t necessarily dump the body right here,” he says, breaking the momentary silence.

Betty nods. “It could’ve been upstream.”

“Great. That really narrows it down,” he says, unable to temper the sarcasm that comes so naturally. “It could’ve been here, _or_ any access point in the first ten miles of the Sweetwater.”

She doesn’t answer.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything here,” he finally says, lowering his voice. “If there were any clues, the cops already picked them clean.”

Betty sighs, and then leans into his side, her temple coming to rest lightly on his shoulder. Jughead doesn’t move, holding himself perfectly still. Her hair smells like coconut.

His heart is beating so fast, he’s positive she can feel it vibrating through his arm.

“You’re probably right,” she says, and then lifts her head and turns around, walking back up to the sunny little clearing like nothing had happened at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the afternoon they go to the pool, with Kevin and – to Jughead’s surprise – Veronica Lodge in tow.

Kevin and Veronica hit it off instantly. “I’ve seen that before,” Kevin says, nudging his sunglasses down his nose to get a better look at her swimsuit, which is black and made up of so many crisscrossed straps that it makes Jughead’s brain hurt trying to imagine how she got the thing on. “On…Bella Hadid? I swear it was in _Us Weekly_.”

“Good eye,” Veronica says, sounding impressed. “I saw her wearing it when I was in St. Barts for Christmas last year, and I just knew I had to have it.”

Kevin looks like Christmas morning and his birthday have arrived all at once. “Tell me more,” he says, looping his arm through hers, pulling her further down the sidewalk.

Jughead rolls his eyes and looks at Betty, who’s kept her pace beside him. “So this is the crew now?” he asks.

Betty smiles back at him. “We can’t be doom-and-gloom _all_ the time.”

“Speak for yourself,” he says, but he gives her arm a friendly bump with his own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Despite her generally upbeat disposition – or maybe because of it – Veronica is fascinated by Betty and Jughead’s foray into the world of criminal investigation. She leans forward in her pool chair, Kevin grumbling as she blocks his sunlight. “And he had a _twin_? Oh! What if they meant to kill his twin but got the wrong one by accident?”

Jughead exchanges an amused glance with Betty, who’s lying on her towel on the grass, to the left of his feet. Today she’s wearing a yellow two-piece. It’s one he’s seen before – and it’s modest, as far as bikinis go, with a high waist and a high neck – but he’s finding it harder and harder to keep his eyes trained on his book and off of the smooth, pale skin of Betty’s stomach.

“There’s no mistaking Cheryl Blossom for anyone other than herself. Trust me,” he says.

“As entertaining as this is, I’m going to go get a hot dog,” Kevin says, standing up abruptly. He stalks away with his wallet in hand. He’d been uncharacteristically quiet ever since the conversation had turned to Betty and Jughead’s morning by the river, which Jughead only now realizes – not without a healthy dose of guilt.

“Shit,” Betty mutters. “I better go talk to him.” She hops up onto her feet and sets off after Kevin.

Even with her eyes hidden behind a pair of enormous tortoiseshell sunglasses, Jughead can sense Veronica’s confusion. “Kevin’s the one who found Jason’s body,” he explains. “I think he’s still…dealing with it.”

She nods. “Ah. Say no more.”

Jughead intends to do just that, opening _Homicide_ on his lap, until Veronica continues, “So. Tell me, Jughead – why _Jughead_?”

“If you knew my real name,” Jughead sighs, “you wouldn’t ask that question.”

“Okay, what’s your real name?”

He shakes his head. “You haven’t known me long enough to know that.”

“And how long is long enough?” Veronica pauses. “As long as, say…you’ve liked Betty?”

Jughead blinks, caught off guard. “Uh – what?”

Veronica’s lips tilt into a wry smile, and she pushes her sunglasses up onto the crown of her head. “You heard me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, looking pointedly back at his book.

“Jughead, I’m not trying to tease you,” Veronica says. “I actually think it’s really sweet.”

He flips the book shut, avoiding her eyes. “Me and Betty – we’ve known each other our whole lives. We’re friends.”

“I know you are _now_ ,” she says. “But you seem like you want to be more. And,” she adds, before he can protest, “I think Betty does too.”

Jughead racks his brain for a witty response, but can only come up with: “You’re crazy.”

“I’ll admit,” Veronica continues, ignoring him, “when I first met her and Archie, I thought there was something going on there. I mean, look at the guy. No offense – you’ve definitely got your own dark and brooding thing working for you. It’s just not _my_ thing. But Betty, like, totally lit up the moment you walked in the diner.”

“Betty’s been in love with Archie since we were five,” Jughead says, repeating out loud the mantra he’s been telling himself at least ten times a week since the summer began.

“Well, she’s not five anymore, Jughead.”

“You don’t even _know_ her. Or me. Or anyone. How long have you lived here, three days?”

“Eight,” Veronica says, sounding offended. “And look, it’s not like either of you are subtle about it.”

Before he can respond, the sound of flip flops on the grass announces Betty and Kevin’s return. “Hey guys,” Betty says. “We got you a hot dog, Juggie.”

“Thanks,” he says, taking the food. Veronica’s mouth curves up into a smug smile, and Jughead scowls. “Everyone knows I like hot dogs,” he mutters.

“What?” Betty looks at him curiously.

“Nothing.”

“So,” Kevin says, once he’s settled back onto his towel. “Betty and I agreed on some terms.”

“We won’t talk about the investigation around Kevin,” she says. “Unless it’s something we _really_ think he should know.”

“Otherwise?” Kevin draws an invisible box around himself with his pointer fingers. “This is a murder-free zone. And it travels with me, 24/7.”

“Fair enough,” Jughead mumbles through a mouthful of hot dog. Betty giggles.

“You’re gonna get food all over yourself,” she says, tossing him a napkin. Jughead can practically feel Veronica’s gaze boring into the back of his skull.

He’s got a _lot_ to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He plays _Young Frankenstein_ at the Twilight that night – one of his favorites – but his mind is far too preoccupied for him to enjoy it.

One thing is certain: the new girl is certifiably insane.

He’s willing to concede that it’s possible that he, Jughead Jones, had done a poor job of hiding his true feelings that night at Pop’s. Maybe he’d laughed a little too loudly at Betty’s jokes. Sat a little too close to her in the booth. Let his gaze linger a little too long on her profile when she spoke. It’s not like he’s had a lot of practice with this sort of thing.

But Betty? Jughead knows what Betty looks like when she _like-_ likes someone. For years he’d seen it every time she looked at Archie.

But then he thinks of the gentle weight of her head on his shoulder that morning by the river…her smile as she’d led him up the stairs to her bedroom…her fingers tangled between his as they stood in her kitchen…

There’s a simple explanation for all of it: Betty is _nice_. She’s sweet. Openly caring. Affectionate with her friends. She’s the type of girl who doesn’t just tolerate hugging people – she actively enjoys it. Coming from New York, he reasons, Veronica may have literally never met anyone as genuinely kind as Betty Cooper. Of course she’d mistake Betty’s good nature for attraction.

But.

There is another possibility. And Jughead is nothing if not open to alternate interpretations of events. After all, he is a writer.

Maybe Betty likes him back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He wonders if there’s a way to ask Archie about it that won’t seem…weird.

He wonders this as he’s sitting on the floor in front of Archie’s bed the following night, his fingers jabbing at an Xbox controller as they counterattack a squad of aliens with machine guns. “Stop shooting me,” Jughead complains. “You always shoot me.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“Try harder.”

Jughead’s player dies anyway, and the aliens win. He tosses his controller to the side, and allows himself a quick glance at the window. No sign of Betty, though her curtains are open and the bedroom light is on.

“I hate this level.”

“You want something to eat?” Archie says. “My dad brought home a bunch of leftover donuts from the construction site this morning.”

Jughead cranes his head back to look at him, and Archie grins, wiggling his eyebrows. “Lead the way, dude.”

They go downstairs and stand on opposite sides of the kitchen island, the box open between them on the counter. (Jughead’s pleased to see there are at least half a dozen left, and none of them jelly-filled.)

“Would you ever eat one of those donut burgers?” Archie muses aloud. “Like with donuts as the bun? I saw it on Food Network or something last week.”

“Is that a rhetorical question?” Jughead replies, biting into a bear claw with gusto. “Because I would definitely eat that.”

Archie laughs, wrinkling his nose. He looks different than he had at the end of the school year – his shoulders broader, his muscles more defined, presumably the side effect of working for his dad – but when he laughs like that, he looks exactly like the little boy Jughead has known for over a decade. “That’s gross, man.”

“You sound like Betty,” Jughead says with a grin, and then immediately regrets it, because Archie doesn’t sound like Betty at all. Betty would never end a sentence with “man.” It’s just that lately, pretty much _everything_ has been reminding him of Betty.

Archie finishes off a donut and then takes another. “It seems like you and Betty have been hanging out a lot.”

 _That’s what happens when you bail on both of us repeatedly_ , Jughead doesn’t say. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I didn’t even think she was gonna be around this summer.”

“Something happened with her internship,” Jughead says, grabbing the last Boston cream from the box. “Like, messed up paperwork or something.”

Saying it himself, out loud, he recognizes how vague and bullshitty it sounds, and makes a mental note to ask her about it again. But Archie doesn’t seem to notice. “That sucks,” he says. “How’s your investigation going?”

Sighing, Jughead slumps forward, resting his elbows on the counter. “Slow,” he says. “We checked out Sweetwater River the other day, but we didn’t find anything.”

“Nothing?” Archie raises his eyebrows. “No footprints…clothes…bullets…?”

Jughead snorts. “C’mon, Arch, footprints don’t last that long.” He shakes his head. “No clothes, no bullets. I didn’t really expect there would be. Kevin just found the body there. Jason wasn’t shot there.”

Archie shrugs, reaching for a third donut. “You don’t know that. There was that gunshot.”

Jughead stops chewing, and stares at his friend. Archie seems oblivious, tapping away at something on the screen of his cell phone.

“Archie,” Jughead says slowly, “what gunshot?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH for your kudos and comments! It's so exciting to know that people are enjoying this and I'm extremely grateful to everyone who takes a moment to say so. :)
> 
> One note on this chapter: I recently rewatched the show for the first time and was kinda shocked by how blasé Kevin is about finding A DEAD BODY? Of a person he knows?? While he's trying to hook up??? So in this version of the story he is not quite as quick to get over what I can only imagine is a very traumatic experience.


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized after I wrote it that this is the fic equivalent of a bottle episode, lol.

Jughead takes a deep breath, and knocks on the window.

If he weren’t so unsettled himself, he might laugh at the rapid progression of emotions on Betty’s face, from terrified to relieved to confused. But instead he nods at her through the glass, hoping it’s reassuring, his fingers flexing around the handles of the ladder he’d found propped up against the side of her house.

“What are you _doing_?” she hisses the moment she slides the window open. “My parents are still up.”

“I have to talk to you,” he says, clambering into her bedroom. Betty steps back and watches him, her arms crossed over her chest, but she doesn’t look angry.

“And you couldn’t do that on the phone?”

Jughead hadn’t really considered that option, or any others – he’d just left Archie’s house, seen the light coming from Betty’s window, spotted the ladder, and decided to climb it.

“No,” he says.

Her forehead creases in concern. “Okay,” she says, shutting the window before she moves to sit on her bed, cross-legged. “Sit. Tell me what’s wrong. Just keep your voice down.”

Jughead pulls the curtains closed and joins her on the bed. He leaves his feet on the floor, unsure of how long she’ll want him to stay, and hyper-aware that Alice Cooper may burst into the room at any moment.

“I don’t know if anything’s _wrong_ , exactly,” he says. “But I just had a really weird conversation with Archie.”

Betty frowns. “What happened?”

“We were hanging out. Playing video games and stuff.” Jughead rubs the back of his neck. “He asked how our investigation was going, and then he said something about a gunshot.” At Betty’s blank look, he adds, “As in, a gunshot _at_ Sweetwater River, on the Fourth of July.”

Betty’s face scrunches up as he takes a breath. “There wasn’t…the police report didn’t say anything about a gunshot,” she says.

“I know.” He’d said as much, standing in the Andrews’ kitchen, his half-eaten donut instantly forgotten. Archie had frozen, and Jughead had been struck with that feeling again – the feeling that Archie was constructing a lie in his head.

Betty remains silent as Jughead recounts the conversation – Archie’s stubborn insistence (one of the news stories about Jason had _definitely_ mentioned a gunshot), followed by hedging (okay, he’d heard about it from someone _else_ who had read all the news stories), giving way to denial (nevermind, maybe he was mixing it up with an episode of _Law & Order_).

Her eyes look glassy by the time he’s finished. “Maybe he did see it on tv,” she says, her voice soft and uncertain. “I mean…you know Archie. His head’s all over the place.”

Jughead grimaces. “Maybe. But it didn’t feel that way.”

Betty looks down at her hands, then back up at him, her eyes almost pleading. “So what are you saying, Juggie?” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “Are you saying Archie was _there_?”

“I don’t know,” he says, because he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what to say, or do, or think.

“Do you think that Archie had something to do with it?” Betty looks equal parts skeptical and terrified.

“ _No_ ,” he says, shaking his head for emphasis. Without thinking, he takes her hand; she squeezes back immediately, her nails digging into his skin a little, just shy of actually being painful. “Archie…no. But…I do think he’s hiding something.” Jughead sighs. “I think he knows more about it than he’s letting on.”

Betty says nothing for a long moment, her eyes wide, her hand firmly gripped in his. Then, with a little hitch of her breath, she pulls away, pressing her index fingers beneath her eyes to quell the tears welling up there. She breathes in once, twice, then closes her eyes for a beat, and opens them again.

It’s clear that it’s something she’s done before, like a choreographed dance playing out across her face, and Jughead watches the whole thing.

“Okay,” she says, all traces of emotional turmoil gone, save for the dark smudges of mascara beneath her lower lash line. “That’s something we’ll have to pursue, then.”

Jughead frowns as she twists around and slips her hand into the pillowcase of one of the many pillows on her bed. Out comes a notebook – no, a diary. She grabs a pen from her bedside table and flips the diary open to a blank page.

“What’s that?”

Betty glances up at him. “I’ve been keeping notes on the case in here.”

Jughead leans a little closer. “Can I see?”

She shifts back slightly, biting her lip. “Well – it’s not just notes. There’s stuff in here that’s…private.”

“Oh, please. I already know what it says.”

Betty narrows her eyes. “You do?”

“Sure. _Dear diary, there’s a new girl in town, and I’m worried Kevin loves her more than me…_ ”

“Shut up,” Betty giggles, and Jughead feels a little glow of self-satisfaction in his chest. She tilts her head, one side of her mouth curving up. “I actually think it’s kind of great that they get along so well. It’ll be nice for Kevin to hang out with someone who has nothing to do with any of this.”

“True,” he says. “And more time with Kevin means less time bothering me.”

“Bothering you?” Betty repeats, scribbling something in the diary. “What, is Veronica flirting with you?”

“What?” Jughead snorts. “No. I mean actually, literally bothering me.”

“Oh.” Betty keeps her head tipped down, still writing. “Well, she’s probably just trying to be your friend. You should let her.”

Jughead makes a noncommittal noise in his throat. “I have enough friends.” She glances up at him, incredulous, and he can’t help but smile. “You and Archie. And Kevin,” he adds, more for her benefit than any actual connection he feels to the sheriff’s son.

“Three friends.”

“Yup. I’m all set.”

“Okay, Jug.”

“Besides,” he continues, picking at a loose thread on her floral bedspread. “Like most girls, I think Archie’s more her type. When it comes to the flirting,” he clarifies.

“Most girls?”

“Okay, all girls.”

“Not _all_ girls.”

But before he can pull on _that_ thread any further, Betty snaps her diary shut. “You know what? You’re right. We need someplace to keep track of all this that isn’t my diary.”

Part of him is relieved at the change of subject. “You got something in mind?”

Betty looks pointedly at the corkboard hanging on the wall beside her desk. It’s covered in a decade’s worth of grade school detritus, the accumulation of a small-town childhood: photos, old report cards, participation ribbons, a shoddily-constructed dreamcatcher.

“A murder board,” Jughead says, catching on quick. “I like it, Cooper.”

Betty admits with a faint blush that she wants to keep the corkboard’s current contents for safekeeping, so they get to the task of taking it all down together, unpinning things carefully, placing them in an empty shoebox on her desk.

One photo makes Jughead pause. “This is new,” he says, staring at a picture tacked to the bottom left corner of the board.

It’s the two of them – a selfie she’d taken earlier in the summer, when they’d baked that cake together. Betty’s lips are pursed in a cheeky smile, a slice of cake on a plate held just below her chin. Jughead’s looking up towards the ceiling, like the camera had caught him mid-eyeroll, but he’s smiling, too.

Betty glances over for just a second before she turns back to her side of the corkboard. “Oh yeah,” she says. “I thought it was cute.”

Jughead would sooner die than say it out loud – but he thinks it’s cute, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Predictably, Archie falls off the face of the earth again – unreachable by phone, silent via text, out of the house every time Jughead or Betty or both stop by to visit. It might be funny in a sardonic sort of way if not for the fact that it makes Archie look, well – guilty.

What’s also not funny: they don’t have a single lead on the case between the two of them, aside from Archie’s slip about the gunshot.

“I’m starting to think we’re really bad at this,” Jughead says, hands on his hips as he stares at the murder board. That first night, they’d tacked up the names and photos of the Blossom family, the football team, and all the girls Jason had dated (that they knew of). Three days later, it looks exactly the same.

Betty comes to stand beside him. “We’re just starting out. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never investigated a murder before. I think there’s a pretty steep learning curve.”

Jughead opens his mouth to reply, but before he can say anything, Betty’s bedroom door swings open. Alice Cooper stands in the doorway, one perfectly manicured hand resting on the knob. “What did I say about doors, Elizabeth?” she demands.

Betty lets out a heavy sigh. “It was open, Mom.”

“It was half-closed,” Alice corrects her. She turns her attention to Jughead. “Hello, Jug Head.”

Although he’d become a semi-regular presence in the Cooper household over the past few weeks, Betty’s mother continued to pronounce his name in an oddly stilted fashion, like she couldn’t quite believe there was a kid named Jughead hanging out with her daughter, sitting in her living room, eating leftovers from her fridge.

(To be fair, she wasn’t the first adult to have that reaction. She was just the scariest.)

“Hi, Mrs. Cooper,” he says.

“Will you be staying for dinner? We’re having lasagna.”

He looks at Betty, who shrugs. “Sure, I’d love to, if it’s not any trouble,” he says, adding, “Mrs. Cooper.”

“No trouble at all. We’ll eat at six sharp.” Alice disappears down the hallway.

Betty waits for the sound of her parents’ bedroom door shutting, then flops onto her bed, propping herself up with one elbow. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she says, “but I think my mom actually likes you.”

Jughead isn’t sure how to feel about that. “That’s…strange.”

He joins her on the bed, pulling a yearbook into his lap and opening it to a random page. They’d gathered all of the old yearbooks from Polly’s bookshelf that morning, in the hopes of uncovering a potential suspect among her and Jason’s classmates. So far they’d come up with nothing – no mysterious figure recurring in the background of Jason’s photos, no jilted ex staring daggers at him from the sidelines.

“Does your mom always call you Elizabeth?”

“Only when she’s annoyed with me,” Betty says. “Which is basically all the time.”

Jughead finds it hard to imagine a parent who wouldn’t be absolutely thrilled to have perfect, pretty Betty Cooper as a daughter – but then, he doesn’t have to, because apparently that parent exists, and her name is Alice Cooper.

“What’s she think of the murder board?” he asks, unsure if he actually wants to know the answer.

“She says it’s morbid,” Betty says, rolling her eyes. “But I think she secretly likes it.”

He quirks an eyebrow. “Really.”

“Yeah. She went to school to be an investigative journalist,” Betty says, her mouth twisting into a sad sort of smile. “And she ended up here, writing puff pieces about the minor league baseball team. So I think she kind of likes that I’m following in her footsteps, or the path not taken, or whatever.” Betty looks up at him. “Do your parents ever call you Forsythe?”

The face he makes in response to his real name is Pavlovian at this point. “Nah,” he says. “I think they regretted that one the moment they signed the birth certificate. Although they went and named my sister the same thing six years later, so who knows what they were thinking.”

Betty laughs. “How are they? Your mom and Jellybean.”

“ _Well_. Jellybean informed me last week that she goes by ‘J.B.’ now, because she is the coolest ten-year-old in the world.”

“Obviously.”

“She seems great, though. She’s going to some sort of day camp over the summer. And my mom…”

Jughead shrugs one shoulder. “She seems fine. I think she’s going to start studying for her GED in the fall.” She’d told him on the phone last weekend. It was the first personal thing his mother had shared with him in months.

“That’s good,” Betty says, her forehead creasing when he doesn’t answer. “It is good, right?”

“Yeah. It’s good,” Jughead says. “But…I don’t know. It takes, like, three or four months to study for the test. So if she’s not even starting until September…” He shrugs again. “They won’t be back before the new year.”

His father had always referred to the separation as “temporary,” while his mother said nothing. So that was how its status had remained in Jughead’s mind: temporary, with a blurry endpoint a month or two off from the present. A moving target, but not indefinite.

Not until now, at least.

The way Betty is looking at him makes his face feel hot, so Jughead ducks his head, staring down at the yearbook in his lap. It’s open to a spread about the theater department’s fall 2015 production of _Little Shop of Horrors_. It has nothing to do with Jason Blossom, nothing to do with the investigation, nothing to do with anything.

He doesn’t intend to say what he says next, but it comes spilling out anyway, like water breaching the levees.

“I understand why she wanted to leave. And why she wouldn’t necessarily want to come back.” He hears himself say the words, but they feel far away, as though they’re coming from another person’s mouth. “I just – I don’t know why she never asked me if I wanted to come with her.”

He feels the mattress shift beneath them as Betty sits up, but he won’t look at her – he can’t.

“Juggie.” Betty’s voice is so soft, and then so are her fingers, which she cups around his jaw, her thumb brushing over his cheek.

Jughead stays still, paralyzed; he reminds himself to keep breathing. No one’s ever touched him like that before. Like _he’s_ the one who might shatter.

“I always thought you chose to stay here,” she says quietly. “Like Archie did when his mom moved.”

He breathes in deep, through his nose, and moves his head slightly so that her hand falls away from his face.  

“It’s what I would have chosen anyway,” he says. “So. I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Betty breathes in like she’s about to speak, but nothing comes out. Jughead clears his throat, and meets her eyes again. He attempts a smile, hoping it looks better than it feels – which is strained, awkward, insincere. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

“And you don’t have to be sorry for not knowing things I never told you, so…” He trails off. “I think we’re even.”

Betty frowns. She looks down at her hands, clenched together in her lap, then looks up at him again, seeming to come to a decision.

But whatever that decision is – she keeps it to herself. “Okay.” She nods. “Even.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hugs and kisses to everyone who has left comments or kudos! Thank you so much! 
> 
> I've read a few fics recently that make similar references to the fact that Alice Cooper says "Jughead" weird. Shout out to Madchen Amick for that acting choice, which I LOVE and which makes me lol.
> 
> And as always I would love to know what you think of this latest chapter!


	6. six

Jughead Jones can’t stop thinking about Betty Cooper.

About her eyes, her hair, her mouth, her smile, her laugh. Her hand on his cheek. The soft timbre of her voice when she says his name.

And it’s kind of becoming a problem. Because the more he thinks about her, the more he starts to think that of all the infinite universes he could have ended up in, he’s somehow lucky enough to be alive in the one where Pop’s chocolate milkshakes are readily available on a daily basis, MST3K is back on the air, and Betty Cooper might _actually_ _like_ Jughead Jones – in a more-than-friends way.

The question now is what he’s going to do about it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s exactly the question he’s mulling over when his phone lights up with a text from her: _Pops for dinner?_

Determined not to appear pathetically over-eager, he forces himself to count to sixty before he replies.

_Sure._ _6?_

Betty texts back a face with heart eyes. He tries not to read into it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He gets there at 5:55. He doesn’t bother trying to suppress his smile as he spots her in the corner booth by the window, but it falters when he sees the other side of the booth is occupied, too.

“Oh. Kevin and Veronica are here,” he mutters under his breath, and slides into the seat beside Betty.

“Hey,” Betty says, giving him a smile. “I thought we should take a break from – y’know.” She glances at Kevin, who rolls his eyes.

“You can say it, Betty, I’m not going to pass out,” Kevin says.

“She’s just trying to be thoughtful, dude,” Jughead says. Kevin looks at him oddly, and Veronica’s eyebrows practically disappear into her hairline. Jughead flushes. He picks up one of the big plastic menus that’s laying on the tabletop and studies it intently, as though he hasn’t had the menu at Pop’s memorized since he was six.

“I know, I know,” Kevin says, and then heaves his chest with a dramatic sigh. “And I’m actually going to break the sanctity of the murder-free zone, anyway. I’ve finally got something to tell you guys.”

Betty leans forward and rests her fingers on Kevin’s wrist. “You don’t have to,” she says, her eyes wide and sincere.

Jughead clears his throat, and bumps his knee against hers under the table. Telling their only viable source of information that he didn’t need to share with them might be kind, but it wasn’t exactly a smart move if you wanted to actually solve a murder case.

She shoots him a look, but adds, “Unless you _want_ to.”

Then Betty bumps her knee back against Jughead’s, and leaves it there.

He meets her eyes for a split second before shifting his gaze to Kevin, who’s looking between the two of them, a slight frown on his face. “It’s fine,” Kevin says, after a pause. “So, okay. My dad brought Dilton Doiley in for questioning yesterday.”

Jughead exchanges a glance with Betty. _Dilton Doiley?_ He hadn’t come up in any of their initial suspect mapping – which come to think of it, was a pretty major oversight, because Dilton had been constantly picked on by Jason and his jock buddies at school over the last year.

“Why?” Jughead asks.

“Something to do with the Blossom case.” Kevin shakes his head. “He wasn’t arrested. But that’s all I know.”

“Who’s Dilton Doiley?” Veronica asks. “And why does everyone in this town have bizarrely alliterative names?”

“He’s the smartest kid in our grade,” Betty says. “Probably in the whole school.”

“Which makes him an easy target for bullies,” Jughead adds, “which gives him a motive.”

Dilton was short, skinny, and very, _very_ intelligent, with a nervous energy that even Jughead found off-putting. Not that it was any excuse for the torment Dilton endured at the hands of the football team.

(Not that bullying was any excuse for _murder._ )

“He also weighs about a hundred pounds soaking wet,” Betty says. “I can’t see Dilton getting the upper hand over someone like Jason Blossom.”

Jughead shrugs. “Guns have a funny way of leveling the playing field.”

“And that’s exactly the train of thought I didn’t want to board tonight,” Kevin mutters.

Veronica rubs his shoulder sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop asking questions.”

“And so will we,” Betty says, giving Jughead another meaningful look. Now her foot moves to nudge his gently, her thigh still pressed against his underneath the table.

Jughead swallows and looks away, feeling his face grow warm again. “I’m starving. Can we order?”

 

 

 

 

 

Their waitress arrives, a welcome distraction, and eventually the conversation slips back into lighter territory: the summer reading for English class (Betty is finished; Jughead’s halfway through; Kevin hasn’t started; Veronica’s going to plead ignorance that it was assigned at all); funny stories about the kids Polly is working with at summer camp; a debate over whether the new Spiderman movie is going to be worth seeing.

At some point, during Kevin’s passionate defense of Tobey Maguire as the One True Spiderman, Jughead realizes with a fleeting moment of shock that he’s actually _enjoying_ himself.

But of course, as with all good things in Jughead’s life, it must come to an end.

After finishing her chicken sandwich, Betty excuses herself to the bathroom, and Kevin and Veronica exchange a look before looking back at Jughead, an identical shrewd expression on both of their faces. Jughead shoves a pile of fries into his mouth, chewing slowly, wondering if he can stretch it out until Betty returns from the ladies’ room.

“So I hear you’re spending a lot of time in Betty’s bedroom,” Kevin says.

Jughead nearly chokes on his mouthful of fries. He swallows hard, coughing into his fist, and Kevin exchanges another wide-eyed look with Veronica.

“Wow. I was mostly joking, but – are you and Betty…?”

“ _No_ ,” Jughead says, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“Alright, jeez.” Kevin leans across the table to dip a fry in Jughead’s ketchup. “I just meant you’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

Jughead narrows his eyes at Veronica, who smiles back. “So have you two, apparently.”

“I have eyes,” Kevin says, pointing at himself with two fingers, then Jughead with one. “I don’t need Veronica to tell me you’re in love with Elizabeth Cooper.”

Jughead coughs again, glancing towards the bathrooms; thankfully, Betty’s nowhere in sight.

Veronica looks at Kevin in disbelief. “Are you kidding? When I asked you about it you said Jughead didn’t even like girls.”

“I said I wasn’t _sure_ if he liked girls,” Kevin corrects her. “I changed my mind.”

Jughead rolls his eyes, but truthfully – he’s not that surprised to hear it. He’d liked girls in a vague, non-specific way ever since middle school, but he’d never appreciated them the way someone like Archie did: openly, _blatantly_ , his best friend’s eyes roving after pretty girls in the hallway, in gym class, at the mall.

Jughead had never really liked _a_ girl until two months ago, when Betty had stood by the counter at Pop’s with her mom and smiled at him over her shoulder, and his heart had plummeted into his stomach out of nowhere.

“As flattering as it is to know you’re _this_ concerned about my sexual preferences, this is getting really weird,” Jughead says. “And Betty’s going to be back in like, thirty seconds. So what’s your point?”

Kevin shrugs. “I don’t have a point. I just wanted to see if it was true, and since you haven’t denied it, I guess that’s my answer.”

“The _point_ is, be nice to our girl Betty,” Veronica says.

The girl in question reappears at that very moment, nudging Jughead on the shoulder so he’ll slide over in the booth. “What about Betty?” she says.

“Jughead was just saying he thought you looked nice tonight,” Veronica says smoothly. “And I was saying you _always_ look nice.”

“Aw. Thanks, guys,” Betty says, the tips of her ears turning pink.

“Shall we?” Veronica says, signaling their waitress for the check. “My mom’s back in the city for the weekend, so Kevin and I thought we’d go back to my place and pop a few bottles of ros _é._ You in?”

“The penthouse is _amazing_ ,” Kevin adds.

Jughead swallows, uncomfortable, but before he can decline, he feels Betty’s fingers brush his elbow.

“I kind of want to dig into this Dilton Doiley thing a little more,” she says. “Are you up for it?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

“Suit yourself,” Veronica says, sounding not-at-all disappointed, and hands her credit card to the waitress before she can even put the bill on the table. “Dinner’s on me. You two get out of here and solve a murder.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside, with Pop’s a few blocks behind them and the sun dipping below the horizon ahead of them, Jughead feels like he can breathe again.

“Thanks for, um, y’know. Doing this,” he says.

Betty and Archie had both been aware of his dad’s drinking problem for years, if not the extent of it. (Though the extent of it was obviously pretty bad if it drove your wife and one child across state lines). While that hadn’t stopped a well-meaning Archie from dragging Jughead to keg parties throughout their first year of high school, Betty had quietly put two and two together on her own, and was always sure to bring back a cup of water for Jughead when it was her turn to fetch a round of drinks.

She looks up at him. “Oh – sure,” she says. “I didn’t really want to drink tonight, anyway. I can’t stop imagining all these crazy scenarios involving Dilton now.”

“Me neither,” Jughead admits, cracking a smile.

“What you said about the bullying makes sense,” Betty continues. “But…I don’t know. Dilton doesn’t seem like a murderer. And he’s literally a genius. If he were going to kill someone, don’t you think he’d do something more…complicated?”

“Complicated,” Jughead repeats. “So you’re thinking this is like, a _Se7en_ situation. Or _Saw_. Solve a puzzle, save your life.”

“What? No,” she laughs. “I never said he was a _serial_ killer. I’m thinking more… _Strangers on a Train_. _Rope._ The whole ‘perfect murder’ thing.”

The fact that Betty Cooper knows her Hitchcock makes him smile.

“You’ve been doing your homework,” Jughead says. “Maybe we should get you up on that murder board.”

Betty laughs. “Shut up.”

He meets her eyes, and mimics a zipper motion over his lips. She laughs again. The back of her hand brushes against the back of his, and Jughead holds his breath, and then he takes it.

Betty falls quiet, but she doesn’t pull away. She lets him hold her hand, their palms pressed together, arms bumping each other every few steps as they amble down the sidewalk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By the time the pace of Jughead’s pounding heart has slowed from _frightened hummingbird_ to _just barely avoided a car crash_ , the sun has nearly set, the sky a dusky mix of purple and orange and pink. Betty’s house is just a few blocks away, but even though they’re going there together, Jughead wants to slow down, draw this out. He could look at her in this twilight for hours.

He could kiss her. He _should_ kiss her. He wants to –

“I think you look nice tonight, too,” Betty says out of nowhere.

Jughead turns his head towards her, startled. “What?”

Betty glances at him quickly. “I mean – nevermind. Just – what Veronica said earlier –” She shakes her head slightly. “Forget it.”

“Betty.” He stops, and tugs her towards him where their hands are still joined.

She stands close, looking up at him with her wide, pretty eyes, her skin practically golden in the fading sunlight, her hand warm in his, and now she’s looking at his _mouth_ – and Jughead knows, in a sudden burst of clarity, that this is the moment.

“Betts,” he says, softer this time, and he brings his other hand up to her shoulder, her neck, and she tilts her chin up –

A car door slams shut somewhere down the street, and as Jughead leans in closer, another voice says, “Jughead?”

Jughead pulls his hands away abruptly, but it takes him a few seconds to snap out of his Betty-induced haze. Somewhere in his peripheral vision he registers a car backing up and driving away; it’s blue.

“Betty?”

The second time, there’s no doubt about who the voice belongs to: it’s Archie.

Betty steps away, and Jughead turns around, jamming his hands into his pockets. Archie’s a few paces down the sidewalk, his guitar case in hand and a bag slung over his shoulder. He looks apprehensive – but whether it’s because he’s been avoiding them for nearly a week, or because he just witnessed his two best friends about to kiss one another, Jughead can’t tell.

He takes a few, oddly tentative steps towards them. “Hey guys,” he says. “What are you doing?”

“Just walking home from Pop’s,” Betty says. Her arms are wrapped around her middle, Jughead notes, like she’s chilly. “We were there. With Kevin and Veronica.”

“Hey man,” Jughead says, adding, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you all week.”

Archie blushes – a rare sight indeed – and scratches at the back of his neck. “Yeah, I know. I’ve been really busy, Jug.”

Before Jughead can respond, Betty says, “Was that Miss Grundy’s car?”

The blue car. That’s where Archie had come from, Jughead realizes – he obviously didn’t appear out of thin air. Though that might actually make more sense than appearing out of their high school music teacher’s car, two blocks away from his own home.

Something flashes across Archie’s face – something painful, almost – but it’s gone before Jughead can really wrap his head around it. “Yeah, it was,” Archie says after a pause. “She’s been giving me music lessons.”

“Why didn’t she drop you off in front of your house?” Jughead asks.

“She was running late for a date or something.” Archie hitches his bag up higher on his shoulder, and nods his head in the direction of his and Betty’s street. “Do you guys wanna…?”

“Yeah,” Betty says, and the three of them fall into step together in the direction of home. But Jughead knows that the way Betty’s biting her lower lip, the slight crease in her forehead, means her mind is still somewhere behind them, still on the blue car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been almost a month since I updated this - I'm so sorry! I really struggled with this chapter, and ended up rewriting a lot of it from what I originally had, which is largely why it took so long. As always, I so appreciate hearing your thoughts, and would love to know what you think of this chapter. 
> 
> Fair warning, I probably won't have another update for this fic until October, because I'm getting married soon and then going on a 3-week honeymoon, which I am not bringing a laptop for! :)

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest, I'm not 100% sure where this is going. But I hope you'll stick along for the ride :) I'd love to know what you think!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr - imreallyloveleee.


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